CineFAM South Africa Short Film Challenge At DIFF And DFM

CaribbeanTales International Film Festival, in partnership with Sisters Working in Film and Television (SWIFT), invites South African women filmmakers to participate in the inaugural CineFAM South Africa Short Film Challenge. The CineFAM South Africa Short Film Challenge aims to create opportunities to garner international recognition and global distribution and is presented at the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) (13 to 23 July) and the Durban FilmMart (DFM) (14 to 17 July).

SWIFT is a newly formed organization that aims to advance the participation of women in the South African audio-visual sector. CaribbeanTales is a group of companies that produces, markets, and sells Caribbean-themed film and television content for global audiences. It includes CaribbeanTales Inc. a registered Charity based in Toronto, Canada; the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival (CTFF) which takes place annually in Toronto in September; the renowned CaribbeanTales Incubator Program, a development and production hub for original Caribbean content; CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution (CTWD), the largest full-service distribution entity dedicated to the monetisation of Caribbean content; CaribbeanTalesFlix, our production arm, and CaribbeanTales-TV, a video on demand platform.

The CineFAM South Africa Short Film Challenge aims to create an opportunity for female South African filmmakers to collaborate and establish creative relationships that stimulate the growth of content made by women. The challenge also aims to connect South African filmmakers with those in the Diaspora as well as a global audience.

SWIFT will present a preparatory workshop on no-budget filmmaking at the Durban FilmMart on Monday, July 17 from 12:30pm to 2pm at the Tsogo Sun Maharani Hotel. This workshop will provide participants with useful tools for making a short film with constraints in time, budget and other resources. This is a free workshop and no booking is necessary.

Following the workshop (which is not mandatory to enter the Challenge), the CineFAM South Africa Short Film Challenge will take place from 19-23 July and will be open to teams with the roles of writer, director and producers filled by women and queer filmmakers from South Africa. The theme from the challenge will be announced on 18 July on the CaribbeanTales website www.caribbeantales-tv.com and the teams will have five days to write, shoot and edit a film of no longer than 5 minutes. Entering teams need to feature female identifying crew in the key positions of writer, director and producer.

Completed films must be uploaded by no later than Sunday, 23 July at midnight (GMT +2) on the CaribbeanTales website. Teams unable to upload the films for submission, from their own internet connections, should contact cinefamza@gmail.com on the first day of the challenge to make arrangements for submission.

A shortlist of up to ten short films will be selected and posted on the CT website for online voting. The challenge will recognize three winning films including best story, best direction and audience choice. Two of these films will be given their World Premiere Screening at the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival and all will be given the opportunity to acquire distribution by CTWD.

“We are very excited to be collaborating with both SWIFT and Caribbean Tales on this initiative and hope it will lay the foundation for more cooperation between filmmakers on the continent and those from the Diaspora,” says Toni Monty of the Durban FilmMart.

“South Africa is a natural partner to CaribbeanTales, and we are thrilled by the opportunity to provide a platform for women filmmakers. CineFAM, meaning “films by women” in Haitian Creole, is a global initiative of ours through which we spotlight to crucial voices of women in film. We couldn’t be more delighted to continually expand the horizons for the kind of stories that we can tell,” says Frances-Anne Solomon, founder and CEO of CaribbeanTales.

Speaking on behalf of SWIFT Sara Blecher said “Short films are brilliant ways that filmmakers and their projects can get noticed. There are countless examples of how short films are precursors for feature films. We hope that through this process, women filmmakers are driven to create work that will start a process of getting recognition, attention and support to further develop their body of work.”

“We are delighted that this new programme to encourage South African filmmakers to take the short film challenge during the festival focuses on women in line with the Women Led Film theme for this year’s festival,” says Chipo Zhou, DIFF manager. “We look forward to seeing the creative results and perhaps seeing some of these films in our festival in the future.”

Published by Andrew Germishuys

Founder of SAMDB, Andrew has worked full time in the film industry since the early 2000's. He has trained as an actor, completing his LAMDA Gold Medal, and attending many courses in Cape Town acting studios, with masterclasses with some of the international industries top directors, producers and filmmakers.
Working as an actor and armourer in the film and television industry have given Andrew a great balance of skills across the board when it comes to the entertainment industry.
Catch him on Twitter: twitter.com/andrewgerm_za
And IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm5390453/
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